On the Beach Chapter Abstracts for Teachers

Chapter 1

• The story is about the last people on earth waiting to die of radiation poisoning after a world nuclear war was written and set in the time of the Cold War.

• With so many small nations developing nuclear capability today, the story is perhaps even more relevant than it was in the 1950s and 1960s.

• A cataclysmic nuclear war in the northern hemisphere has killed everyone and the radiation is moving south; soon everyone on earth will be dead.
• Peter and Mary Holmes and infant daughter, Jennifer, represent the effects of the pending doom on a typical young family.

• There is a sense of normalcy in a Christmas barbecue and a day at the ocean among friends.

• The Australian society adjusts to the new shortages and different ways to do things illustrated by Peter's bicycle and homemade wagon.
• Reality comes to the forefront when Peter is assigned...